Under the bright lights and under a big stage, Monta Vista athletes performed superbly at the Central Coast Section track & field championships on Friday night.

Senior Arvind Rao has had an incredible streak of races to complete his Monta Vista career–he set four PRs (Personal Records) in four weeks!  Leading up to the championship Arvind went 1:58 in the El Camino League Championships, 1:57.76 in SCVALs, and 1:56.58 in the CCS semis.  With the fastest men in the CCS, Arvind went out to compete.  At the first lap, I hit my watch to get a split and looked down to see a 56–and assumed I must have made a mistake, but I was not, the whole pack was going so fast!  Arvind kept pushing and drove through the last lap, passing many of the top runners around, and finished on the podium with a 4th place medal and a 1:55.84–which is a seven second improvement over his best time last year!  That is peaking at the right part of the season!  That’s an incredible improvement in the 800, and Arvind deserves his recognition as one of best 800M runners in CCS this year and one of the best 800M runners Monta Vista has ever had (we will need to go back and see if we can figure out where Arvind stands on the all-time MV list, records are sketchy but he must be up there).

Jenny Xu also set a PR with an 11:18.28 in the girls’ 3200M.  Jenny ran a really smart, tactical race–most of the runners took off too fast but Jenny stayed with her plan as well as she could given what the other girls were doing.  Jenny did a great job of adjusting her race plan on fly to respond to what was happening around her.  After the race settled down, Jenny took control of one of the chase packs.   That group of girls followed her lead as she pushed the pace and ran down the tiring runners, including the SCVAL champion.  Jenny was the only freshman in CCS to qualify for the 3200M finals and her time was good for 8th in the section.  Great job, Jenny!

Kevin Bishop also ran a fantastic race on the way to his second consecutive 3200m championship.  Kevin is a brilliant race tactician as well as a great athlete.  Kevin stayed right with Yohaness Estifanos from Milpitas for most of the race; when Yohaness tried to push the pace with a 65 second lap late in the race, Kevin stayed right with him. With a lap to go, Kevin unleashed an amazing kick. I’d looked over to Jenny to listen to something that she was saying, and when I looked back Kevin had a 30m lead that was growing! His last lap was 59 seconds, which was faster than the last lap of the 1600m race. Amazing!  Kevin’s finish qualifies him for the California State Championship meet next week in Clovis, so Monta Vista’s 2012 track season continues for one more week.

It’s pretty rare that every athlete on a team in a big meet has either a PR or a victory–but that’s what happened with Arvind, Jenny and Kevin.  Congrats, you guys, your teammates, coaches and families are all happy for you and proud of you!

No photos yet–but hopefully we will get some soon!